quarta-feira, 21 de novembro de 2012

The Church Opposes Science: The Myth of Catholic Irrationality - by Christopher Kaczor

"Christopher Kaczor is one of our finest young Catholic
philosophers. In The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, he shows that he
is also one of our finest defenders of the Catholic faith. Essential reading for
the new evangelization." - Most Reverend Jose H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los
Angeles

Many people believe that faith and
reason, or religion and science, are locked in an irreconcilable war of
attrition against one another. One must choose to be a person of learning,
science, and reason, or choose to embrace religion, dogma, and faith alone. On
this view, the Church opposes science, and if one embraces science, then one
ought to reject the Church.

The scientific method looks to evidence to settle
questions, so perhaps it would be fair to look at evidence to answer the
question whether the Catholic Church is opposed to science and reason. If the
Catholic Church were opposed to science, we would expect to find no or very few
Catholic scientists, no sponsorship of scientific research by Catholic
institutions, and an explicit distrust of reason in general and scientific
reasoning in particular taught in official Catholic teaching. In fact, we find
none of these things.

Historically, Catholics are numbered among the most
important scientists of all time, including René Descartes, who discovered
analytic geometry and the laws of refraction; Blaise Pascal, inventor of the
adding machine, hydraulic press, and the mathematical theory of probabilities;
Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel, who founded modern genetics; Louis Pasteur,
founder of microbiology and creator of the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax;
and cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, who first developed scientifically the view that
the earth rotated around the sun. Jesuit priests in particular have a long
history of scientific achievement; they

contributed to the development of pendulum
clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to
scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They
observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's
surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the
circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility
of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of
light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control
measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into
Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as
influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting
Jesuits among their most prized correspondents. [1]

The scientist credited with proposing in the 1930s what came to be
known as the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe was Georges
Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest. Alexander Fleming, the
inventor of penicillin, shared his faith. More recently, Catholics constitute a
good number of Nobel Laureates in Physics, Medicine, and Physiology, including
Erwin Schrödinger, John Eccles, and Alexis Carrel. How can the achievements of
so many Catholics in science be reconciled with the idea that the Catholic
Church opposes scientific knowledge and progress?

One might try to explain such distinguished Catholic
scientists as rare individuals who dared to rebel against the institutional
Church, which opposes science. However, the Catholic Church as an institution
funds, sponsors, and supports scientific research in the Pontifical Academy of
Science and in the departments of science found in every Catholic university
across the world, including those governed by Roman Catholic bishops, such as
The Catholic University of America. This financial and institutional support of
science by the Church began at the very birth of science in seventeenth-century
Europe and continues today. Even Church buildings themselves were not only used
for religious purposes but designed in part to foster scientific knowledge. As
Thomas Woods notes:

Cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome
were designed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to function as
world-class solar observatories. Nowhere in the world were there more precise
instruments for the study of the sun. Each such cathedral contained holes
through which sunlight could enter and time lines (or meridian lines) on the
floor. It was by observing the path traced out by the sunlight on these lines
that researchers could obtain accurate measurements of time and predict
equinoxes. [2]

In the words of J. L.
Heilbron of the University of California, Berkeley, the "Roman Catholic Church
gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy over six
centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages
into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably, all other institutions."
[3] This financial and social support extended also to other branches of
scientific inquiry.

Such support is not only consistent with official Catholic
teaching but is enthusiastically endorsed. On the Church's view, science and
faith are complementary to each other and mutually beneficial. In 1988, Pope
John Paul II addressed a letter to the Director of the Vatican Astronomical
Observatory, noting, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition;
religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw
the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish." [4] As Nobel
Laureate Joseph Murray notes, "Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as
a Catholic and a scientist — I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the
other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there
can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation — the way
it emerged — it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a
conflict." [5] In order to understand the complementarity of faith and science,
indeed faith and reason more broadly, it is important to consider their
relationship in greater depth.

A sign hung in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton
University that read: "Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything
that counts can be counted." Faith cannot be quantified and counted, like
forces in physics or elements in chemistry, but that does not mean that faith is
insignificant. Faith helps us to answer some of the most important questions
facing mankind. As important as scientific discoveries can be, such discoveries
do not touch on all of the inevitable questions facing us: What should I do?
Whom should I love? What can I hope for? To answer questions such as these,
science alone is not enough because science alone cannot answer questions that
fall outside its empirical method. Rather, we need faith and reason operating
together to answer such questions and to build a truly human
community.

One reason that people view faith and science as in
opposition is that they often view faith and reason more generally as in
opposition. Our culture often pits faith against reason, as if the more
faith-filled you are, the less reasonable you are. Faith and reason in the
minds of so many people are polar opposites, never to be combined, and never to
be reconciled. In this way, our culture often offers us false alternatives:
live either by faith or by reason. To be religious is to reject reason; to be
reasonable is to reject religion. But like other false alternatives, e.g., "Did
you stop beating your wife this week, or last week?" such thinking artificially
limits our freedom. Rather than choosing between faith and reason, the Church
invites us to harmonize our faith and our reason because both are vitally
important to human well-being.

Developing a long tradition of Catholic reflection on the
compatibility of faith and reason, Pope Benedict XVI seeks to unite what has so
often become divided, by championing the full breadth of reason (including but
not limited to scientific reasoning) combined with an adult faith. Rather than
pitting faith against reason, the pope is calling for a reasonable faith and a
faithful reason. From a Catholic perspective, the truths of faith and the
truths of reason (including science) cannot in principle ever be opposed,
because God is the ultimate Author of the book of Grace (revelation) as well as
the book of Nature (philosophy and science). One ought not, therefore, choose
between faith on the one hand and reason on the other, but rather one should
seek to bring both faith and reason into a more fruitful
collaboration.

In a Catholic view, since faith and reason are compatible,
science — one particular kind of reasoning — and the Catholic religion are also
compatible. Nevertheless, it is a commonly held view that one must choose
between science and faith. Why is this? There are several core issues that
drive this misunderstanding. First, Genesis claims that God created the world
in seven days, but science indicates that the universe, including the earth,
developed over billions of years. Secondly, Genesis talks about the first man,
Adam, and the first woman, Eve, being created by God, as well as all the animals
being created by God. Science indicates that all life — including human life —
evolved over millions of years. Third, Bible stories are rife with miracles,
but science has shown that miracles are impossible. Fourth, and most famously,
the Catholic Church condemned Galileo. Finally, the Church's opposition to stem
cell research is seen as anti-science. Each of these objections is commonly
used to justify the claim that the Church opposes science.

First, let's consider the claim that in Genesis God
created the world in seven days but science indicates that the universe,
including the earth, developed over billions of years. In the Catholic
tradition, the creation accounts in Genesis have been interpreted in a wide
variety of ways. Both literal and figurative readings of Genesis are
theologically acceptable for Catholics. Some theologians, such as Saint
Ambrose, understood the Genesis account of creation in a literal way. But for
the most part, Catholic theologians, including Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI,
have interpreted Genesis as teaching the truth about creation in a nonliteral,
nonscientific way. [6] Pope John Paul II puts the point as follows:

The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of
the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific
treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and
with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was
created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the
terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer.
[7]

Dr. Scott Hahn has pointed out that we
might misunderstand the point of the seven days spoken about in Genesis, if we
do not understand that the ancient Hebrew word for seven is the same
word used for "making a covenant". So, when it is said that God created the
world in seven days, the text is communicating to its original readers that God
has created the world in a covenantal relationship with the Divine. [8] Indeed,
it was this idea — that the world is an orderly creation from an intelligent God
— that led to the beginnings of science. For if the world is not intelligible
and orderly, there would be no point in trying to understand its laws of
operation, the laws of nature which scientific investigation seeks to discover.

Secondly, the incompatibility of Genesis and the evolution
of species causes some people to think that religious belief is incompatible
with science. If the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, were created by
God, as well as all the animals, then all life — including human life — did not
evolve over millions of years. If all life evolved over millions of years, then
there could not be a first man, Adam, a first woman, Eve, or a creation of
animals directly by God. As noted, the Catholic Church does not generally
require that individual Scripture verses be interpreted in one sense rather than
another. Individual believers and theologians may come to different
understandings of a particular passage but remain Catholics in good standing.
So, one could believe with Saint Ambrose that Genesis provides a play-by-play
account of exactly how God did things over seven 24-hour days. Or, one could
believe with Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman,
Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI that Genesis is not properly
interpreted in this literalistic way. If one interprets Genesis in the ways
suggested by the nonliteral view, then there is no contradiction in believing
both in Genesis and in evolution as a way for accounting for the physical
development of man provided one believes in a first man and first woman, from
whom mankind descended and inherited original sin (see Humani Generis,
no. 27). [9] Of course, the Catholic Church does not require that Catholics
believe in evolution or any other view taught by any given scientist. However,
if one believes in evolution, then one can also — as did Pope John Paul II —
remain a faithful Catholic. [10]

A third problem that gives rise to difficulties for some
people is that miracles are found in the Bible, but science is incompatible with
belief in miracles. By miracle, I mean a supernatural intervention by God into
the normal course of events. Is belief in miracles incompatible with science?
To answer this question, it is important to distinguish science or the
scientific method from what is called philosophical naturalism. The scientific
method looks for natural causes to explain things that have happened.
Philosophical naturalism, a philosophical theory, not a
scientifically justified view, holds that there are only natural causes
and no supernatural (divine) causes. Scientists can conduct their scientific
investigations with or without a belief in philosophical naturalism. If God the
Creator exists, then naturalism is false because a Creator God is a supernatural
cause. If there is a Creator with power over the entire universe, then miracles
are possible, for God could intervene in his creation. Indeed, science could
only prove that miracles cannot happen, if it proved that there is no God. But
science has not and cannot prove such a claim, since the realm of science is
limited to the empirically verifiable, and God — at least as understood by most
believers — is not a material being but a spiritual being.

Fourth, and most famously, many people believe that the
Catholic Church is antagonistic to science because of the condemnation of
Galileo Galilei. This notorious and complicated conflict — the subject of many
scholarly books — is partially based on scientific disputes but also has much to
do with the conflicts of personality, politics, and theology of the time.
Galileo's view that the earth rotated around the sun was not the central issue.
Heliocentrism was held by many people of the time, including Jesuit priests in
good standing. More central to the Galileo controversy was whether Galileo
broke agreements he had made about in what manner to teach his views. Through
his polemical writings, Galileo alienated one-time friends and gave rivals an
opportunity to undermine him. His work Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems was widely understood to mock the pope, a onetime friend and
sponsor. Galileo did not limit himself to scientific claims on the basis of a
view at the time lacking conclusive proof, but also insisted on challenging the
dominant interpretations of Scripture at the time, which held that the sun
rotated around the earth. [11] Thus, both influential theologians as well as
scientists turned against Galileo. If Galileo had presented his views with
greater modesty about his claims, it is likely that there would have been no
condemnation.

Nevertheless, it is true that ecclesial authorities
wrongly condemned Galileo's heliocentricism, which was in 1633 not yet
scientifically demonstrated. Galileo's view was condemned because of an overly
literal interpretation of a certain passage in Scripture. This erroneous
condemnation could have been avoided if the theologians involved had remembered
the methods of biblical interpretation propounded by Saint Augustine and Saint
Thomas Aquinas, who recognized that Scripture often speaks the truth about
creation in a nonliteral, nonscientific way. Pope John Paul II
wrote:

Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist
and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the
experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of
the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The
error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the
Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure
was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture.
[12]

Indeed, even today people still
speak, as does Scripture, about "the sun rising", even though strictly speaking
it is not the sun that rises but the earth that turns, causing it to appear that
the sun rises.

In any case, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the
ecclesial judicial authorities in the trial of Galileo were wrong. These errors
of a disciplinary and judicial nature were not a formal part of Catholic
teaching. Then, as now, Church officials can and do make errors — unfortunately
sometimes serious errors — in terms of discipline and order within the Church
community. Church infallibility only applies to official teachings of faith and
morals, not to assigning the best bishop to a particular place, nor to making
wise decisions about political matters, nor to determining who can and ought to
teach certain topics. The condemnation of Galileo was an erroneous decision in
a matter of judicial order in the Christian community, but it does not have to
do with official teaching of faith and morals.

One final controversy is the alleged opposition to
science seen by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins writes, "He [Pope Benedict] is an
enemy of science, obstructing vital stem cell research, on grounds not of
morality but of pre-scientific superstition." [13] In other words, the Church
opposes science because she opposes embryonic stem cell research that involves
destroying human embryos. Stem cell research is viewed as a promising means of
fighting disease and promoting human well-being, but the Church, in Dawkins'
view, stands in the way of this progress.

It is important to begin responding to Dawkins' accusation
with the common ground shared by all people of good will. Indeed, everyone
agrees, including Dawkins, that we should not kill innocent people, even if
killing them might benefit other people or bring about an advance in scientific
knowledge. The Tuskegee experiment in which African-American males were
research subjects without their consent and to their detriment is universally
condemned. Similarly, the research done by Dr. Josef Mengele on various human
patients, or rather victims, in Auschwitz cannot be justified regardless of the
scientific progress that was an alleged goal of the experiments. It is a basic
principle of ethics that persons should not be harmed without their consent in
scientific research in order potentially to benefit other people.

It is this principle, together with modern science, that
has led the Catholic Church to oppose embryo research that kills human embryos.
If human embryos have basic human rights as do other human persons, then
embryonic research that involves killing human embryos is wrong. It was
actually science overcoming "pre-scientific superstition" that brought the
Catholic Church to the defense of human life from conception. In ancient times,
Aristotle taught that the human person arose only 40 to 90 days after the union
of the man and the woman in sexual intercourse. Aristotle thought, and this
view was a common one until the nineteenth century, that the menses of the woman
was "worked on" by the fluid ejaculated by the man to form a human being, some
40 days after the sexual union in the case of a male and 90 days in the case of
a female.

Contemporary biology has shown that this understanding of
how human reproduction takes place is radically mistaken. Sperm and egg are the
gametes of sexual reproduction, not the menses and the entire ejaculated fluid.
There is not a different time period for the formation of male and female
children, nor does the seminal fluid continue to work for weeks and weeks to
inform the menses. Rather, egg and sperm unite so as to create a new,
individual, living, whole human person which passes through various stages —
zygotic, fetal, infant, toddler, adolescent, adult — of human
development.

Is there any reason to think that the human embryo is
alive? To live is to have self-generated activities. The activities of
proportionate growth and increase of specialization of cells contributing to the
good of the whole organism indicate that the embryo is a living being. Further,
it is clear that the embryo can die, but only living things can die, so the
embryo must be living.

Is the living embryo also human? Since the embryo arises
from a human mother and a human father, what species could it be other than
human? Coming as it does from a human mother and a human father, made of human
genetic tissues organized as a living being, and progressing along the
trajectory of human development, the newly conceived human embryo is
biologically and genetically one of us. This new living, growing being is a
member of the species homo sapiens, a member of the human family. This
human being is genetically new, that is, distinct from both mother and father.
The embryo is not a part of the mother (as is obvious when the embryo is in a
petri dish and not in utero), but rather is made from part of the mother (her
ovum) and part of the father (his sperm). This new person is an individual
whose genetic makeup and very existence is not the same as the mother's or
father's or anyone else's. There is nothing "pre-scientific" about the Church's
view that the human embryo is a human being; indeed, this view is confirmed by
the findings of science which overturned the long-accepted prescientific views
of Aristotle on reproduction.

Now, should very young human persons, including human
embryos, be protected by law and welcomed in life? This is a moral question,
not a scientific question. Science attempts to discover what is the case;
ethics attempts to discover what should be the case in terms of human choices.
Should the human embryo be protected as are human persons at later stages of
development? I have explored this question at great length in a book called
The
Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of
Justice. Looking at every single pro-choice objection of which I was
aware, I found that there is no rational justification for not according every
human — including those in the embryonic stage of development — equal basic
rights, including the right not to be intentionally killed in the hopes of
benefiting other people's health. By contrast, defenders of abortion and lethal
embryonic stem cell research hold that it is permissible to kill some human
beings in order to benefit others. However, neither view is
"scientific". Science qua science cannot settle the question of which human
beings should be accorded human rights and welcomed into the human
community.

Dawkins is also mistaken that the Church obstructs vital
stem cell research. The Church opposes research — stem cell or otherwise — that
involves the intentional killing of human embryos. Stem cell research that does
not involve killing embryos is not only permitted by the Church but
even funded by the Church, which has held at least two international conferences
on stem cell research and has also funded research on adult stem cells
undertaken at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. This research,
using stem cells from adults or umbilical cords, has actually been developed
into treatments that have already saved human lives. To date, despite billions
of dollars, embryonic stem cell research has not led to one cure or a single
effective treatment. The Church does not oppose stem cell research as such, but
only opposes any kind of research that involves killing humans.

At this point, we are in a position to come to a prima
facie judgment about the question of whether the Church opposes science.
On the one hand, we have the many Catholic scientists of distinction, from the
beginning of the use of the scientific method until now, who argue that there is
no conflict between their faith and their pursuit of science. We have the
institutional Church sponsoring scientific endeavors of all kinds, at Catholic
universities around the world, in the construction of cathedrals, and at the
Vatican itself. We also have the explicit Catholic teaching that faith and
reason are not opposed but rather complementary, and that scientific reasoning
and faith are mutually enriching. On the other hand, we have the trial and
condemnation of Galileo. The Galileo case appears, against the larger
background of Catholic teaching and practice, as an unfortunate aberration from
the norm. However, both Galileo himself — who remained a faithful Catholic all
his life — and those involved in his trial, such as Saint Robert Bellarmine,
agreed that there can never be a true conflict between science and faith.
Apparent but not real conflicts can arise through a mistaken interpretation of
faith (as was made by those who condemned Galileo), a misunderstanding of
science (e.g., that science requires denying miracles), or both. It is
therefore a myth — albeit a persistent myth — that the Church opposes science.

On Pope Benedict's view on this topic (at least the views
he expressed prior to his election as pope), see Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, In
the Beginning... : A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and
the Fall, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
I995).